


un mardi, dans un café

by 2wistful



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Narry fluff, pure fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:04:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2wistful/pseuds/2wistful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>on a tuesday, in a cafe</p><p>or, niall and harry in paris. just because.</p>
            </blockquote>





	un mardi, dans un café

Paris, France.

Niall has always been a creature of habit. He goes into work at exactly 10:00 AM and sits in his cubicle, listening to everyone drone on endlessly about how much they hate work and can’t wait to get home and go out to the bar or the club. Niall, however, always packs up at 6:00 PM sharp, and strides out the door, obsessively smoothing the creases in his suit that have formed during the day. He checks his watch constantly too, because he likes making it home in less than ten minutes. Anything longer annoys him.

He always methodically prepares his dinner, and eats it by himself in the kitchen with the doors to the small balcony open, while Ray LaMontagne croons on the dilapidated radio that belonged to his grandfather. He doesn’t bring people back to his apartment. They either aren’t interested in it’s appearance, which he’s worked very hard on, by the way, or are too interested and touch everything without asking, and that makes Niall’s skin crawl.

He fixes his dinner slowly, because he enjoys the process of sautéing the meat, taking swigs from a bottle of pinot noir between flipping his vegetables so they cook evenly. His face flushes from the heat of the electric stove, wisps of hair sticking to his forehead while the kinks in his spine straighten out and his shoulders begin to relax.

Niall enjoys these quiet evenings with no pressure from other people. He can sit back and unwind, let his mind wander freely. He’s reserved around other people and doesn’t feel comfortable around spontaneity and wild atmospheres; he likes being in control and not drifting around. He fixates on one thing at a time, because it’s all he knows how to do.

Niall keeps to himself, because he figures it’s easier that way. Less to worry about, less to think about, more energy conserved for things he deems worthy, rather than what he considers frivolous like one night stands, drinking games, or socializing with his shallow co-workers.

He finishes dinner and indolently smokes a cigarette out on the fire escape, watching the nightlife below. The nightly dose of nicotine is his guilty pleasure, relaxing and soothing his frayed nerves from of the stress of the office, while the red wine gently blurs out all the other ragged edges until the frown lines on his forehead smooth out and he can breathe again. When he finishes the cigarette, he stubs it out and leans his head against the cool metal of the railing, and just sits there, feeling the iron press into his skin and thinking that it might be the most solid thing he’s ever felt.

Everything is routine for him; nothing varies in his apartment. It all stays in the same place, things are only moved to be dusted, then put right back. He entertains thoughts of someone coming to live with him in the spare room sometimes, but then he’d have to share everything else. He thinks about _his_ kitchen and _his_ sofa and _his_ television, and so he always changes his mind, knowing he’d rather scrape by with one source of income even if it means only one bottle of wine a week.

That night, when he settles into his mattress, still damp behind the ears from a lukewarm shower, his eyelids flutter shut and he falls asleep almost instantly. Falling asleep quickly isn’t unusual for him, but the day that follows will be.

+++

His alarm goes off at precisely 8:00 AM, like every other morning before it, yet somehow he manages the same amount of surprise every time. Niall groans, flinging the covers back as he blearily rubs at his eyes. A yawn escapes his mouth, almost splitting his face in two as he jams his feet into the ratty slippers on the floor that he still hasn’t trashed, but they’re from his uni days, and so he feels some sort of sentimental value towards them.

It takes longer than he expects to get dressed, shave, and wash his face, and somewhere along the line he nicks his chin with the razor, causing the frown lines to settle back into his forehead. Dashing out the door at a quarter to 9, it unsettles him how flustered he feels, like everything in the world has been shifted a centimeter to the left and no one’s bothered to tell him.

He stops at the same tiny café he normally does, and gets his pastry and cup of coffee, black with exactly two and a half sugars, no milk, and sits outside at his usual table, shooing pigeons away with his napkin all the while. After he finishes his breakfast, he still has half an hour until he has to go into work, so he reaches for the daily paper sitting on the other chair at his table. It’s half crumpled, probably from someone sitting on it, so he tries in vain to straighten it out, reading bits and pieces of the news in-between splashes of coffee stains. The paper is mostly adverts and vague pieces about the city’s politics and economy, neither of which he cares about very much, so he sets the paper down and fiddles with his empty cup, checking his phone every five seconds. He still feels agitated and jittery, thinking the cup of coffee probably wasn’t a good idea. Running his fingers through his carefully gelled hair without a thought of what it might look like, he slumps back in his chair, unsettled. As he leans back, he happens to look through the large window that separates the indoor dining of the café from the street.

It’s a large picture window, very charming and framed with blooming flowers, but Niall isn’t interested in the window, he’s interested in what lies beyond it. A boy, who sits at the rickety table just inside the window in the seat facing Niall, is what has caught his attention.

His breath catches in his throat, while his heart stops and then starts again, jerkily. The boy is from a dream, long and lanky and sprawled out like he’s at home on the sofa and not in a cramped café. Chestnut tendrils curl at the boy’s ears, framing a sharp jaw and slightly hollowed cheeks. The boy’s lips, god, his lips. They’re pink and soft and pouty and Niall can’t believe the thoughts he’s having about this boy here while he’s sitting outside a public café for christ’s sake.

He stands upright with a jerk, his chair screeching metallically against the pavement, which scares off at least ten pigeons. The boy looks up curiously at the sound ringing through the glass; green eyes meet blue, and an electric shock runs down Niall’s spine.

He spins on his heel and strides down the street, shaken by this encounter, these thoughts about a stranger that he’s never even spoken to or seen before today. Halfway to the office, he turns back because he’s forgotten his phone, stupidly enough.

When he gets back to the café, already five minutes late to work, the boy’s table is deserted, and Niall doesn’t know if it’s disappointment or relief that fills him at the sight of someone else in the window.

+++

The next morning, the boy is there again. This time he gives Niall a slow, lazy half smile through the window, and Niall flushes, pretending like it didn’t take all of his willpower to not immediately look for the boy the minute he sat down.

He doesn’t look at the boy again, makes himself not look at the boy again, and grits his teeth at the taste of his coffee. He was too distracted and forgot his two and a half sugars, which he’s never done before. But, he reminds himself, he’s never acted this way before.

Niall watches the boy leave the café, watches the way the boy’s thin t-shirt clings to his shoulders, watches the way he folds his hands into the pocket of his trousers, watches his legs striding as he disappears down the street.

The only thing Niall isn’t watching is the time, and so when he looks at his watch, he finds that he’s late for work. Again.

+++

The boy isn’t there the next day, or the next, and suddenly it’s the weekend and all Niall’s done at work all week is consider what a failure he is, that he can’t even talk to the lanky boy that frequents the same café that he does.

So he goes out that night after tossing and turning in his bed for a few hours, because everything else in his life is topsy-turvy and why the hell can’t he just add to it if he wants?

The club he’s dragged into by the promoter on the street is bright and pulsating with energy and heat and movement, and he just stands there, squinting at the vividness of it until he’s pulled into the center of the crowd, which is so alive that it’s throbbing with electricity.

His body is coated with sweat as he moves through the tempest of color and vigor, and someone offers him a small pill which he doesn’t think twice about, taking the pill and placing it on his tongue, where it melts into oblivion and seeps into his pores and his nerves so that every hair is standing on end, and he can hardly breathe because of how alive he feels.

Some time later, he stumbles out of the club, every inch of his body feeling like it might spring apart at any second, and he walks along the street, breathing in the cool night air until his lungs are so full of oxygen and stars that he can’t do anything but sit on a deserted bench and close his eyes until it all slows down.

+++

After wandering around the streets for most of the night, he finds himself sitting at his usual table at his usual café, watching the sun as it rises over Paris. It’s so intangibly lovely and perfect and Niall can actually feel his heart thumping painfully in his chest, although that’s partly due to the drug still in his system.

As light and warmth fills the streets, people begin to stumble out of their homes and make their way down the street. Niall supposes he should join them, but he’s so incredibly drowsy that he just nods off, right there at his usual table at his usual café, wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday.

+++

He jolts awake an hour or so later, when the streets are quiet again, only the occasional car speeding past, hurrying to whatever destination down at the end of the road.

Niall swats at a pesky fly buzzing around his ear and lets out a small groan. He stands and shuffles into the café. Never mind that it’s the weekend and he never comes here on weekends. Really, he should be at home in bed, blissfully sleeping the better half of the morning away before he wastes the rest of the day dangling off the sofa watching the telly until his eyes blur.

If the girl tending the register is surprised to see him there, she doesn’t show it, only rings up his usual before he has the chance to say anything, and he fishes a few euros from his pocket, telling her to keep the change.

He squints at the brightness coming from the outside through the large picture window as he waits for his coffee, patting his pockets in a vain search for his sunglasses. A headache is coming on, he can feel it beginning to pound at his temples as he finds the darkest back booth in the small café, and nurses his coffee until he thinks he might be able to function again.

+++

That night, Niall takes three aspirin and goes to bed. His dreams are alive and vivid, centering on the boy from the café with eyes that dance and dimples that go on for days.

+++

The next day is Sunday, and Niall goes to mass, only because he promised his grandmother that he would still go after she died. He goes every Sunday, and thinks of her, and her little house in Bordeaux by the sea, and the crumbling little chapel they lit candles for his grandfather in.

When he leaves the church, he allows himself to be swept up in the crowd, lets himself be carried by the stream of people, ebbing and flowing, until he ends up at a small park near the Seine, where he wanders about aimlessly, watching the couples, young and old, stroll with their eyes locked more tightly than their hands.

Niall absently sits on a bench, his mind whirling in a million different directions, yet unable to latch onto or make sense of anything. What is he doing? Is he really happy with his life? Does he like working five days a week, every week, with the exception of Christmas, when all he does is sit at home and get drunk off the expensive bottle of vodka that his company gives him every holiday season?

Maybe he should get a dog, Niall thinks. Or that boy from the café.

+++

It’s Monday, and Niall’s alarm goes off, same as it always does. He hits snooze. He hits snooze again. He hits it over and over until it’s five minutes until he’s expected at the office and he’s still in bed.

He calls in sick, apologizing to his boss while conjuring up some convincing sniffles and coughs. Niall thinks to himself that he’s become pathetic, really, and that he needs to just talk to the boy from the café that’s got his head all muddled so he can go back to how everything was before. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like how his pulse picks up whenever he thinks about him, or how his palms sweat, or how he’ll be walking down the street and he’ll see a tall boy with dark curly hair and his heart skips a beat. It makes him hot and uncomfortable and flustered, and honestly, he doesn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

He turns on his battered old radio and listens to Ray LaMontagne for the better half of the day, drinking most of his bottle of wine for the week, singing along with Ray, “I will stand here, and burn in my skin…”

+++

It’s Tuesday again, and the week has rounded itself out. It’s a misty morning, autumn having swept into Paris almost overnight. Niall drags himself out of bed early, determined to go to the café and speak to the boy who has so suddenly consumed his thoughts, day in and day out.

When he gets there, the boy is nowhere to be found, inside or out. Shoulders slumped; Niall ducks back inside the café to ask the barista if she’s seen him lately. Before he can say anything though, a flash of color catches his eye through the large picture window.

He sucks in a breath of air sharply through his nose, not quite daring to believe what he’s seeing.

It’s the boy.

He’s standing outside the café at Niall’s table, wearing a gray sweater and a scarf and holding a bouquet of flowers. The boy is looking right at him, and Niall flushes, all the way down to his toes. He doesn’t even know this boy’s name, but they have time, Niall thinks, as the world slows around him. They have all the time in the world.

+++

The boy’s name is Harry.

Niall isn’t so lonely anymore.

It’s become _their_ kitchen, and _their_ sofa, and _their_ television, and two bottles of wine a week instead of one, and Niall still sprawls out on the sofa listening to Ray LaMontagne after dinner, only now Harry’s head is in his lap and he watches Harry’s eyelashes flutter open and closed.

Niall doesn’t smoke cigarettes anymore, and he goes with Harry to Harry’s mother’s house for Christmas, and he can’t believe that he and this boy found each other, stumbling into each other’s lives like they did. This beautiful boy, with eyes like the sea on a cloudy day and a laugh that can chase those same clouds away.


End file.
